Comparative regional report on citizenship law: Anglophone Caribbean In the case of Barbados, both the gender and ius soli qualifications intersect in that Barbadian law states that a child born abroad and out of wedlock will only acquire citizenship ius sanguinis via the mother if the latter was born in Barbados. No such stipulation exists for the male citizen. Additionally, if a child is born abroad to a citizen mother, married to a noncitizen father, the mother must have acquired citizenship ius soli to pass her citizenship via descent to the child. Again, no such stipulation exists for the male citizen. Several other countries also allow for differences in the acquisition of citizenship via ius sanguinis based on whether or not the citizen parent obtained his or her citizenship via birth on the soil. Thus, in Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, the citizen parent must have acquired citizenship otherwise than by descent in order to pass on his or her citizenship to their child born abroad. Ius sanguinis is thus qualified in several countries in the area. 3.1.3 Special rules for citizenship acquisition at birth Special rules for citizenship acquisition at birth exist in a limited number of countries when it comes to foundlings and children at risk of statelessness. Generally, Anglophone Caribbean countries have few safeguards in place to protect against statelessness7 at birth. Of the 12 countries, only half provide citizenship to foundlings and only four have clear provisions for citizenship acquisition by stateless children born on the territory (Table 1). In both Barbados and St. Kitts and Nevis, citizenship acquisition via registration is only provided to those who are born on the territory with the additional restriction that the person “has always been stateless.”8 Guyana is the only country to discriminate against male citizens in the special provision of citizenship to stateless children. That is, only children born to female citizens at risk of statelessness can acquire citizenship through this special measure.9 The provision of citizenship to a stateless child can be withheld in Guyana and the other three countries based on concerns to national security, public defence, safety and order. Jamaica, which has been Party to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness10 since 2003 has yet to produce publicly available criteria on the citizenship acquisition process for stateless individuals on its territory. 7 Statelessness is the condition of not being recognised by any state as a citizen according to the operation of its law. 8 This restriction also exists in the Guyanese Citizenship Act (Article 4.2), but is not reiterated in Article 8 of the same Act, which also deals with statelessness. 9 The Guyanese constitution (Article 43) allows for automatic ius soli citizenship acquisition, but the Guyanese Citizenship Act (Article 8) stipulates that only a stateless person born to a Guyanese mother may acquire Guyanese citizenship. Article 4 of the Act further declares that a person must have always been stateless. 10 Article 1 of the 1961 Convention states that a Contracting Party must grant its nationality, subject to certain limitations, to an individual born on its territory who would otherwise be stateless (UNHCR 1961). 4 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp. 2020/3 - © 2020 Authors